Korean BBQ

By Alison Cook |
November 15, 2007

Owner Mia Velez mixes chili paste into a dish of bi bim bap in a hot stone bowl at Korean BBQ. With her are her daughter, Flora Velez, left, and granddaughter, Melea Simpson, 3.

Photo By Melissa Phillip/Chronicle

A galbi platter from Korean BBQ is surrounded with side dishes.

A glistening fried egg perched on top of a hot stone bowlful of rice, beef and vegetables at Korean BBQ.

Mia, the no-nonsense owner of the cozy, family-run spot in Webster, hovered over the table, determined to make sure her first-time guests got the procedure right for customizing the dish, known by the mellifluous name of bi bim bop.

She hacked through the egg with a deft wrist-flick and began tossing it through the rice mixture, scraping the bottom of the vessel repeatedly to turn up the browned, crusty bits where rice met hot stone. When she had everything just the way she wanted it, she grabbed a dish of bright red chile paste from the table and pitched a huge blob of the stuff into the rice, mixing and turning until the color seemed right.

Then she turned to me and my companion, both of us waiting transfixed. "Be careful you don't break your teeth on the crusty rice!" chortled our hostess, who looked very pleased with herself, her dish and her joke.

Several bites later, I could see why. Something magical had happened in that hot stone bowl: a concatenation of bold textures and earthy flavors that made for a supremely comforting yet complex dish.

"This is the best bi bim bop I've ever eaten," I told my friend while feverishly chopsticking up blissful shards of rice crust and unfamiliar vegetables: a twiglet of green here, a long, glazed segment of roasted root vegetable there.

"What's this?" I asked Mia's daughter, who was waiting tables that afternoon while her own two small daughters played at a nearby table. I held up the twig of green.

"Fern," she told me. "We just call it fern."

"How about this?" I asked, hoisting the pale root in my chopsticks. I thought it looked like the narrow burdock roots I had seen in Japanese groceries.

"It's a root," she informed me after consultation with her mom.

By then I no longer cared about nomenclature. All I was interested in was chasing every last scrap of bi bim bop around the bowl, marveling at how it could seem both so familiar and so strange.

That's the effect Korean BBQ can have on its non-Korean customers. The atmosphere at this tiny mauve-hued restaurant is so homespun and familial that even such dishes as pan-fried octopus in hot red chile sauce and a piercingly briny stew of kim chee (hot pickled cabbage) seem reassuringly down to earth.

Despite the "BBQ" tag in its name, Korean BBQ does not feature the tabletop grills common in larger Korean restaurants, on which customers cook pieces of marinated meat or seafood for themselves. The ventilation system required would be too much for a vest-pocket eatery to afford.

So the barbecuing takes place in the kitchen, and it produces such agreeable specialities as tender strips of "Genghis Khan beef" in a sweetish red-chile marinade, sizzled on a hot platter and tossed with lots of juicy, crunchy bean sprouts. Or thin, bone-in slices of galbi (beef short ribs) with slightly sweet, charcoaly exteriors.

Each of the several barbecued-meat dishes on the abbreviated menu comes with the traditional constellation of relishes and pickles known collectively as na mul. Mia makes all of them herself, from brawny chunks of brined daikon radish (for which she is particularly famous) to gentle slices of cucumber or zucchini; from piquant fillets of mini salted fish to curiously delicious segments of chile-spangled fried potato served at room temperature.

The relishes change from day to day, depending on what is in season, and they are a real treat to eat with such dishes as the galbi (or even the bi bim bap) in alternating bites. They arrive in their tiny dishes in flights of eight or nine, like gifts on Christmas morning.

Korean BBQ does not have an extensive menu, nor does it have a liquor license (although you may bring your own beer or wine if you also bring the receipt). Yet it is comfortable and friendly, and the things it does well make it worth a visit, especially for the many Houstonians who adore spicy foods.

The various dumplings of pork or vegetables, either steamed or deep-fried, are notably light and delicate. The characteristic Korean pancakes, which fall somewhere between a pancake and an omelet, seem less successful, however. A small vegetable-flecked version was clammy and without textural interest; it seemed deflated. A pizza-size seafood pancake worked better, although it veered heavily into omelet territory; it was studded with everything from oysters to chewy strips of cuttlefish. Mia did everything but wrestle the pie to the ground while divvying it up with a pizza slicer.

Meanwhile, her granddaughters colored quietly in a booth, her daughter hustled the orders from the kitchen, and her significant other produced an ice-filled cooler to house a customer's beer.

Soon, this gentleman was kibitzing with a big table of guests and explaining how his hobby of restoring vintage pedal wagons had contributed to the décor. An improbable wagon in a glossy coat of mauve pink paint sat high on a shelf, emblazoned with the Korean BBQ name.

It was just as fetching as the peculiar Korean green-grape drink that lurked within a serve-yourself refrigerated case. Just slightly sweet, the juice was animated by whole, skinless grapes that slipped and slid as they went down, like some precursor to tapioca bubble tea.

As my party was finishing up that night, Mia noticed my friend Jim eyeing the family meal that was being consumed at the next table.

"Do you want to try these?" she asked him, holding up a sheaf of squiggling fat noodles.

Of course he did. So did I. The noodles were homemade, lightly bathed in a spicy broth, and I had every reason to believe Mia when she claimed they would cure whatever ailed you. On our way out, the wagon-restoring paterfamilias pressed a couple of containers of ginger-honey tea granules upon us.

"One teaspoonful in a cup of hot water," he instructed my neighbor, who had lived in Korea and had been suffering from a lingering cough. "That should fix you up."